Some Guy Ended Up Getting StarCraft's Source Code Off Ebay

An interesting story recently took place involving a guy who ended up buying an original gold master disc containing the source code and original intellectual game property of the first StarCraft from Blizzard Entertainment. How did he get it? Well, he paid for it from eBay.

In a report by Kotaku, they explain that Reddit user Khemist49 had told his story across various posts on Reddit about having bought a "box of Blizzard stuff" from eBay for the heck of it, and inside the box one of the items happened to be a gold master disc for the original source of StarCraft.

A gold master disc is a version of the game that is finalized with all its final code in place. This is the version of the game that is turned into the retail release to distributed globally. These days, however, gold masters aren't always "finished" in the way that they were back in the day, since most AAA titles these days require day-one patches in order to be "complete". But I digress.

Khemist49 took to the internet to discuss his find with the gaming community. Having a gold master of an original masterpiece like StarCraft isn't just a rare find... it's a legendary find! The RNG rolled favorably in Khemist49's favor.

However, as noted by Kotaku, he was met with a lot of opposing views about how to handle the situation. Some people wanted him to make backup copies and dump the contents onto the internet so that the community could have access to the original source of StarCraft. Others felt he should put the game back in the box and ship it back to Blizzard for safekeeping since it wasn't his.

The news eventually managed to get back to Blizzard, and typically they had their lawyers get in contact with Khemist49 and requested him to send the disc back to Blizzard's offices.

After seeking legal advice on what he should do, Khemist49 ended up sending the gold master disc of StarCraft back to Blizzard. This was something that disturbed him for a while and he was torn on what to do but eventually he did right by Blizzard and returned the disc, and expressed a sigh of relief for having that put behind him, finally.

However... Blizzard wasn't done with Khemist49.

The company called up the benefactor of the original StarCraft source code, and they actually invited him to BlizzCon, all expenses paid, and even offered to take him out for drinks at the event.

The phone call was accompanied by a big box of more Blizzard stuff, consisting of Blizzard themed paraphernalia, including Overwatch mouse, keyboard and headset, a copy of Diablo III, some plushies, and up to $250 in Blizzard store credit.

In this way, Blizzard basically rewarded this guy for doing the right thing. Kotaku also received word from Blizzard confirming that they did indeed invite Khemist49 to BlizzCon this year, and that he did in fact return the gold master disc to them.

A lot of people in the comment section on the article speculated that he probably made a copy of the gold master source code disc of StarCraft before shipping it back to Blizzard. Let's be honest... most of us would have done the same thing.